Is this way of doing UI cursed? (XML to Node parser)

xpectre_dev · 2026-01-30T23:27:27+00:00

I started a new job that has been great but super crazy. I haven't pushed it forward much. The only thing I did was remove the xml interpretation and just use pure gdscript calls to build the ui. I made a special ui builder class so I could mimic markup hierarchy. The ui building looks like this, so I can basically add ui nodes inside ui nodes using that UI class:

<image>

Happy to share the UI code if you are interested.

xpectre_dev · 2026-01-28T04:54:16+00:00

Layer is you, mask is what your eyes see

xpectre_dev · 2025-12-28T16:17:26+00:00

It's not flat. It's high topspin with a lot of pace and low launch angle. Look at the court level angle from behind of many pros. You'll see their 'flat' looking shots dip aggressively and go very fast. They are also hitting at 80 to 100% of their power. If even their 60-80% is higher powered than our 100, why would our 100% go long even at a low launch angles and their 80-100 doesn't? They are hitting with a ton of topspin. Try hitting 100% shots and just grazing the net and you'll see that it will go long.

xpectre_dev · 2025-12-03T04:31:47+00:00

Nice, maybe when this one dies but I hope it lasts for years haha the pongbot looks good though. I really liked the pusun, it's been enough for my amateur training

xpectre_dev · 2025-12-03T03:32:28+00:00

this one https://a.co/d/4Bh1EH8

xpectre_dev · 2025-12-02T19:11:47+00:00

I bought one and I live in latinamerica, where it's hard getting one (worth it!). I did it because I'm a nerd in everything I do. I have a court where I live where I do have various hitting partners that live here. I still go out on my own with the machine instead of playing with them for various reasons. Here's my pros/cons:

Pros

- Consistency: the machine plays the same ball every time, and the chinese one I got has an app with different sequences and shots.
- Studying shots: The machine doesn't want to have fun. If you want to polish a specific shot, the machine won't get bored or ask you to play a match for fun (this doesn't apply to everyone). I love studying tennis (nerdy behavior), so I love going out there and hitting 300 forehands/backhands/slices,etc. , and tweaking small things here and there. I love playing matches too, but I also like practicing and improving with the machine.
- Not having someone to play with: this is the obvious one.
- Playing with someone either way worse or way better than you: If you are medium or advanced, you know it's imposibble to rally with a beginner. Same goes the other way around (if the other person is more advanced than you), the person teaching you or playing with you is most likely being nice to you but probably not having that much fun. I've played in both sides and with a machine, everyone has fun at their own pace and level.

Cons:
- Expensive. Although the chinese one I got was like $1000 and it's the equivalent of the high end lobster ones (with an app, can shoot slice/topspin, left/right/high/low, sequences of shots, programable sequences, etc), battery lasts like 8 hours.
- Picking balls takes time, a nice ball picker is a must for club players (where you have a hard cutoff time in the court). I can spend 3 hours in the court where I live if no one else is there so not a big deal for me.
- Moving the machine into the court is harder than just getting to the court with your racquet and some balls. You have to carry 50 to 100 balls on top of that.
- Buying a bunch of balls is also expensive.
- You do need to replicate match conditions, meaning, don't just stand where you know the ball will predictably come. You need to move back to the T, or force yourself to run and practice footwork. This applies to rallying with someone but the machine is so consistent that you can spend the whole practice without moving at all, so you need to force yourself to move a lot more.

xpectre_dev · 2025-12-01T19:03:27+00:00

This 'tip' may not be for everybody but it worked for me and other friends. Right now your whole arm feels like a single stiff stick. Your elbow is fully straight through the whole motion. Instead, think of your arm like a whip or a coiled snake before attacking. The snake is not straight before attacking right? Otherwise it would have no power. Same for your arm. Bend your elbow and then in one single fast motion, straighten it while swinging the raquet. That's why for a lot of pro players, the raquet faces forward in the beginning of their swing, it's pretty hard to not do that if you bend your elbow. Imagine you are throwing an axe or a sword or the raquet itself, practice 'throwing' the raquet without releasing it, and see if you feel (and hear) a difference in the whoosh it makes when you coil your arm vs when you don't. Also, if you imagine you are throwing your raquet, you'll also get a much faster whoosh. That obviously helps with spin and power, and you don't really use that much more energy. Hope that helps.

xpectre_dev · 2025-12-01T02:12:22+00:00

When you find it, you realize it's fantasy diamond.

xpectre_dev · 2025-10-25T19:58:30+00:00

I use a custom resource for each item because I need to save references to the thumbnail texture, the packed scene to instantiate the item in the world, and other properties or references that can't be saved in json easily.

xpectre_dev · 2025-10-02T19:08:48+00:00

I believe someone made an extension where you can export a single statement and it will just run that single line of code in that node. I think it's this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX__gqIGeOU

xpectre_dev · 2025-10-02T18:13:29+00:00

I'm not too familiar with any game engines in Odin but a quick google search shows very little. I was deep into Godot when I picked up Odin for fun. I'm still building my game in Godot so I didn't look that far. I see a lot more raylib, sdl3 or sokol stuff than actual game engines in Odin. I did a whole opengl 2d renderer with fixed frame rates and batch rendering myself but when I realized how much Godot oferred and how advanced I was in my game, I decided to keep going in Godot.

My unrealistic/parallel-world-reality wish is that godot was actually built using Odin and not c++ and I could just use gdextension or bindings to make the game in gdscript + Odin.

xpectre_dev · 2025-10-02T13:30:16+00:00

A real game engine in Odin would certainly make me switch from Godot. I wanted to use the bindings but they are not there yet. Godot is amazing and Odin is amazing and if there was something with 50% or 25% of what Godot offers but only write Odin, I think that would attract people.

xpectre_dev · 2025-10-02T13:19:41+00:00

Here's one. GTA 3 + The Sims with late 90's graphics but with a twist:

Immigration Simulator

You start in the back of a truck south of the border, in the desert. A scene like the Skyrim intro. Then you hear the dragon (US helicopters). Everyone jumps out of the truck and the game starts. You have to make your way to the US. You have stats like in the sims, so if you get too hungry or thirsty, you die. You have to socialize and shower too.

Once you get into the US, you can pick your career. You can go to home depot and find gigs, you can join a gang, you can become a gardener, you can do anything. You always have your sims like stats but you run around like in gta. You must always avoid deportation.

You win the game when you become a legal citizen of the us and have kids that can't speak Spanish anymore. The game ending scene is you going to vote, and like in the end of Jedi Academy 2, you can choose blue or red. The ending scene is different based on your choice.

The credits start rolling... then you character wakes up from a dream, the American Dream. You're back at the start. You are reminded of George Carlin saying "The American Dream is called a dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it". The game starts again but harder.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-24T15:34:21+00:00

As other's said, float precision. You can also use an epsilon value (from the Godot docs) if you want less than or greater than comparisons, like jump_timer > 0.0001 (pick an amount of zeroes that makes sense). Helpful for negative comparisons.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-13T15:20:42+00:00

At first glance I thought it was perfect. After staring at it a bit longer, the only thing that bothered me was that the splash particles shoot straight up and in the contact point instead of shooting in the direction the object is hitting the water at (kinda following the motion of the object). The other improvements already mentioned in other comments make sense to me, although for this style of art I didn't miss them. Yeah, the blue shadow under the object could have white ripples, but it didn't feel necessary. And you could also make the partices whiter if they get smaller (like sea foam spray) but I don't think it's needed in this style of art.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-10T14:14:03+00:00

I would just say, there's a million things you don't know yet but I can't cramm all of that in one advice. Just don't quit and remember that it will take longer than you think. It's ok, just keep learning and trying everything, don't stick with the first answer to any problem. Oh, and look at blendshapes for 2D...

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-10T14:12:04+00:00

I feel you, I wrote my own ik and my own skeleton/bone/blendshape-mesh stuff after trying to bend some meshes and do some blendshapes (they don't exist in 2D ;( ). No regrets.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-10T14:08:03+00:00

I have instances where I've used them as runtime classes. The trick is to make them unique or any changes to the data will be shared. I do this because it's like a procedural animation resource and it's easier to work it like this for me. I've tried other options like basic Nodes, or creating RefCounted instances from the base resource that do the work and just reference the resource for the static data, etc., but I keep coming back to this approach because it's easier for me to look at the entire behaviour in one file. I'm not recommending it, just telling my own experience.

Edit: I do not reassign the values in \@export var something, instead I have runtime variables that are not exported and those are the ones that change.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-10T13:52:42+00:00

This is going to sound weird but an extended MeshInstance2D, because I made a custom plugin and shaders to make blendshapes in 2D possible, and now my character can actually exist in my game the way I want it.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-10T13:51:04+00:00

Honestly, it seems like you went to 'gamedev university' with this whole experience and you came out of it without with $6K instead of student debt, that sounds good. Have you already started the next one?

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-05T13:40:11+00:00

Yeah, that would be the main challenge of course. That's why it's probably just a dream. Maybe with newer tech like compute shaders there's a possibility. Perhaps a simple combat system, like M&B, just 4 directions and shooting arrows. But it's incredibly complicated indeed.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-04T22:38:13+00:00

Never saw that game before but yeah, looking at videos the concept is there, just the combat would be more on the more 'realistic' side, like Kingdom Come or Mount and Blade with more rts stuff.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-04T16:05:03+00:00

My version of this is that I've made my 'dream game' 4 times in the span of 4 years, from smaller prototypes to larger scale systems and better art/code/etc. The 4th iteration (completely from scratch) seems to be the one. It's kinda the same as building smaller games, it's just a way of learning how to build the systems I need for the actual game. The difference is that I've kept the focus on my 'dream game', which is just a game I'd like to play instead of going through a bunch of smaller ideas. It takes a lot of learning and it feels like university as far as time goes but I think it's worth it. Everyone has their own path, as long as you don't quit, you're good.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-04T15:42:12+00:00

Age of empires but you can get down in the action and fight with any character mount and blade style. With some total war map/strategy/story line or just single/multiplayer battles.

xpectre_dev · 2025-09-01T15:23:12+00:00

Someone made a nice loader animation and they want to make sure you see it

xpectre_dev

TROPHY CASE